About the Exhibition: From 2008-2011, Isaac Diggs & Edward Hillel made photographs of one of the most iconic streets in New York City: 125th Street. Working collaboratively on film with a 4x5 field camera, the two artists meticulously captured the street during a tumultuous time in NYC after the financial crisis. The images document Harlem when the neighborhood was being sanctioned for rezoning by Mayor Mike Bloomberg and swallowed up by the ever-expanding Columbia University campus, forever changing this "main street" in profound and long lasting ways. The exhibition at Hunter East Harlem Gallery features a selection of the duo's large-format photographs from their comprehensive 2014 publication, 125th: Time in Harlem. The exhibition re-contextualizes the book into the three-dimensional space of a gallery, showcasing a wall mural comprised of the entirety of their book in sequence as well as archives from the project itself. Through intentional and considered image-making, the duo confronts the audience with the challenges of urban flux, gentrification, the loss of cultural memory, the production of space and the preservation of community.

For more information see: https://www.huntereastharlemgallery.org/diggs-hillel-time-in-harlem

Credit: Photography by Argenis Apolinario.